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We here at tl-dr are pretty relaxed about what types of games we talk about. It’s more about the experience and the ways information and games interact (which gives us a wide variety of things to talk about, which is nice). I talk quite a bit about the hardcore gamer side of things, Diane does as well, with a lot more library/information science thrown in, Erik rounds it out with some RP and game design; and then we have some great guest authors like Scott who write about that strange concept known as gamification.

I bring this all up because today I want to try and tie them all together somewhat. I want to bring all of those topics under the same roof and show that they all matter to every population of gamers, librarians, gamificationers (It’s a word… I swear!), and even a little to the nudists…ok maybe not, that’s more Erik’s thing.

The Hardcore Gamers and the Librarians

A bit of a cheesy example, but the Library of Congress is actively collecting video games (as well as the Smithsonian), but the interesting thing to note about that is they are trying to  preserve these games for posterity. They have a pretty rigid collection policy, but the preservation of games is a pretty big deal.

I’m an Archivist by trade (among other things), and collecting old media is pretty difficult. Just think of this example:

Do you want to play those old Atari games that were awesome? Others probably do too!

…too bad almost no one has an Atari anymore.

Emulators you say? Not quite the same experience as using the original Atari controller, if you ask me.

So, the hardware preservation is just as important as the software. Check out Extra Credits, they had a good episode about this.

Short but sweet: librarians are trying to preserve the history of gamers, so there are more links than you think!

Games, Gamification, and Librarians

Google just came out with a wonderful new game (maybe not so new? New to me), and I think it’ll be pretty popular because everyone loves trivia. The different with this trivia is that you’re allowed to use Google. And compete against your friends.

Here’s where the librarian part comes in: Librarians love to search for stuff, and they love trivia. A generalization, I know, but a pretty true one. Why you ask?

Before Google (and during Google, and after Google), Librarians will be the ones that can find the information for you. Sure, everyone can find stuff on Google, but a good research librarian will find it faster, and will be able to comb the deep pockets of the Internet that Google can’t touch. Try it sometime, go to a public library and test their skills.

Which brings me to gamification.

Currently in library/information school (yes, librarians have to have a Master’s Degree), the art of searching is taught by understanding the systems and resources and then practicing it a bunch. Why not add a gamification layer to that? Like…perhaps…this Google game? My reference class would have been SO MUCH BETTER if we would have used this game instead of the assignments we did. We could have all done it as a class. Oh man, it would have been AWESOME!

I highly recommend any professor or student who reads this to try using this game in a LIS class; the students will love it more than you will imagine (and you probably will too!). Competing against a professor always makes it more fun.

tl-dr

Librarians are taking care of games, because they like games too. If you don’t believe that, try playing this game against one and see how you do!

Ding! You’ve Leveled Up! Please see your local librarian for training. Or an ass whooping at A Google A Day. 

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The use of the word “rape” [...] is getting used more and more and I’m sure I’ve caught myself using the word although I prefer the word “gank” and the same to have similar meanings except “gank” doesn’t have that real word connection, at least not that I’m aware of.

– Orkela, commenting on Jacob’s post about griefing and trolling and all that other shit

OK, people. Yes, we’ve had posts about corpse camping (and how to handle it) and how Riot is handling these things. But it seems like no matter how much we post about it all, we find more to say about it. Today, I need to talk about “rape.”

It feels empowering to know this will be posted publicly on the Internet: I was raped. It was a long time ago, but it changed the direction of my life in ways I can’t even begin to explain. I became a stronger person for it, but that took many years to achieve. It didn’t turn me into a militant feminist. I don’t believe all men are bad. I think candlelight vigils and marches to observe the horror of rape are kind of pointless because I don’t know that they really fix the problem. I still have occasional horrific anxiety attacks; these only started after it happened. But I’ve had no choice but to move on, and my strength impresses people who know me well.

A couple of nights ago, I was in a battleground, and it was clear we were losing. This prompted one of my team members to say “we’re getting raped” in bg chat. I had decided a while ago that anytime I saw that word used in game, I wasn’t going to let it go. Ignoring casual use of that word is almost as bad as pretending rape itself doesn’t exist, or isn’t as bad as it is. So I replied with something like this: “please don’t use that word – I was raped irl and it bothers me to see it here.” When I do this, typically they stop, or at least don’t reply to me.

But, that night, that person did reply. He said things, horrible things, in response, such as “I’m re-raping you” and “I like rape” and some other things I have blocked out of my mind. Out of shock, I called him an “asshole” and some other things I shouldn’t have said, but he continued. I started sweating, shaking, and crying. I certainly couldn’t concentrate on the bg anymore. I /ragequit.

The amazing man sitting next to me on the couch asked the troll what was wrong with him (peppered with all kinds of great language, of course!), but the room was spinning too much for me to see the response, or to see if the disgusting talk continued. I sat there, in shock and devastation and anger at the mean people we share this world with, my hands covering my eyes. I heard him typing furiously next to me. Eventually I looked up, and saw him sending a ticket to a GM about the troll. After he finished, he said he told Blizz that if they didn’t do something, we’d stop our subscriptions. Then he held me and reminded me of this very essential truth: frequently, on the Internet, people don’t remember that there are real people at the other end of the line. I knew he was right, but that didn’t stop my flashback or my disappointment about humanity’s meanness. I went to bed and slept fitfully, and in the morning wondered if I’d had a nightmare. Maybe I had a few nightmares, I’m not sure. But I remembered the incident was real, and then wasn’t terribly enthusiastic about starting the day.

By the next evening, Blizz had replied and said they’d do something about the troll, but they didn’t say what they would do. I didn’t want to play that night. I still don’t want to play. I will face it eventually and create new fun times in game, but I’m not ready right now. And that is ok. If I had truly faced my pain over the rape years ago instead of stuffing it down with too many antidepressants and food and general withdrawal from life, maybe I would have recovered sooner. It’s taken me almost 20 years to realize that if you shed a few tears on occasion about something horrible, it is healthier for you and the people who surround you.

Yes, don’t forget that entire communities (including our gaming communities) surround us rape survivors. Rape is everyone’s issue. Talk with my mother or that awesome man next to me on the couch about their thoughts on my rape if you don’t believe me. It’s also not just a woman’s issue. The questions like “What was she wearing?” and “Where was she?” that are typically asked of female rape survivors make us think we should have done something different to prevent it. But we would never ask these questions of a man who was raped, would we? Read this post from a male gamer who survived rape as a child for a powerful perspective.

But the question becomes: how do we stop it? I think a lot of these comments – not just the word “rape,” but anything nasty that any troll says – are due to ignorance. I wonder whether that person would have pushed it with me as far as he did if his mother or sister had been raped. Simple policing such as reporting the player, or self-preservation acts like putting the player on our ignore list, is sometimes all we can do, but it doesn’t solve the bigger problem: these people, and their shitty attitudes, exist. People frequently lack knowledge about other categories of things and people that they are mean about, which is odd because we’ve all got defining characteristics that set us apart from others. Perhaps the troll’s father died when he was 4 years old, or he hates his red hair, or whatever… something would set him off if I pushed enough buttons, I’m sure.

I’d like to end this post on a positive note, and say “it will all get better after librarians know how to give people all the knowledge they need for achieving personal intellectual enlightenment” or proclaim “Google will save us all” or give some other Infogameristic words of wisdom… but I don’t have any of those words right now. To fix a lack of education, or to open your mind up and sense the broader world, you have to want it intrinsically. The existence of information, professional educators, Internet content providers… none of it can force your brain into recognizing how your words and actions affect the people with whom you share the world. Including the World of Warcraft, it seems.

Thank you for sharing in my catharsis. And if you write hateful comments in response to this post, I will approve them. You know why? Your words speak for who you are. Including these people.

tl-dr

it was me and a gun
and a man on my back
and I sang “holy holy”
as he buttoned down his pants
you can laugh
it’s kind of funny
things you think
at times like these
like I haven’t seen Barbados
so I must get out of this

–Tori Amos, “Me and a Gun,” singing about her own rape

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Blogs have a tendency now and then to focus on things that are negative, or to whine about a company (guilty). This is not one of those posts. I’m making an effort to talk about the good work games are doing when I see it, cause good work like that should be rewarded.

Onward!

GW2 has done some amazing work with the search interface on their trading post (TP). I notice this because it’s what I do for a living, and it’s so damn easy to use. Diane and I talked quite a long time ago about SWTOR and their (horrible) interface for their GTN, and I want to do something similar today, but highlight how awesome ArenaNet has been for their trading post.

Filters

SWTOR did these as well, and ANet did it the same as them (as they should have). This is all pretty standard, and works just how it should.

Sorting

GW2 also allows for sorting of search results by level, price, rarity, and # Available. The good news is, it sorts ALL of the search results, not just the ones on the page (like SWTOR did). Again, something small, but awesome.

Search as you Type

Everyone knows this, and uses it, and takes it for granted. ANet has done it right and done it well. It’s taken for granted in their game, and that means it works how it should.

Pretty awesome shit.

Good for them. It’s something that can be extremely difficult to implement, but they did a good job of implementing it well.

They even did the awesome thing of having search as you type work for words in the MIDDLE of a phrase, which is awesome. So, if you want a “Berserker’s Pistol of the Earth” you can search for “Pistol” and it will bring up search as you type options for all different kinds of pistols, not just the boring standard pistol with no stats.

Free Text Search

This might seem strange, but GW2 also does have a free text search. You can go in and type in a string of random words, and it will search on that and bring you some results. They might not be exactly what you want, but you’ll get results. Many search engines that have a controlled vocabulary (like items in a video game) won’t bring you any results unless you type the item name in EXACTLY. GW2 isn’t like that. You can have your free text search as well as your item specific name search. It’s good to have both for different types of users.

Again, good on ANet for this.

Web Interface

This part is pretty cool. They made the TP accessible to third parties through the web. It brings you such awesome things as the GW2 DB and GW2 Spidy.

What could they do to make the search better?

This is nitpicking because the search is pretty good already, but if they wanted their search to be downright sexy, they should add some facted searching.

Imagine using the GW2 TP like amazon. You search for a “pistol” and then you can use the filters AFTER you’ve searched. You can then narrow down search results by price, color, level, any of those attributes. That would be AWESOME. They are actually not too far away from it already, it’s just a matter of if they think it’s worth it or not. (They could hire me to help them out ).

Also, they could make their free text search a little bit better. It’s decent now, but it could get better. That’s just me nitpicking though.

tl-dr

GW2′s Trading Post is work of great searchability, others should take note. And then ArenaNet should add faceted search so they can be absolute pimps.

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Madeline is currently a history and library science student at the University of Maryland, College Park; was formerly a sixth-grade teacher in California, and has always been a proud and nerdy Seattleite/Oregonian.

Portal, the popular FPS/puzzle game that has been the source of too many meme phrases since 2007, has a more serious side than we knew. For teacher-librarians, or anyone else who has ever had to teach anyone anything, Portal is an excellent example of good instruction methods. Nicholas Schiller made this argument in a 2008 Reference Services Review article called “A Portal to Student Learning”, and it’s a very interesting argument for anyone interested in gaming or teaching.

Librarians (especially academic librarians) are teachers, but we are often not trained as teachers. Therefore, when we must design lesson plans and work on lesson goals, it is often hard to get a handle on some of the trickier teaching concepts. Fortunately, Portal is an excellent teacher and can help teacher-librarians understand tricky concepts in a concrete way.

(I’m not going to describe how Portal works because if you haven’t played it, you really should. It costs $10 on Steam, goes on sale twice a year, and might change your life.  Also, if you are interested in the whole idea of video games as teachers, please read James Paul Gee’s What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy. It’s fantastic.)

Portal is a good example of two specific teaching practices: scaffolding and assessment.

Scaffolding instruction means to provide plenty of support as students are learning and then remove the support as they begin to master concepts and skills. The first room in Portal is empty except for a cube, a button, and a door, so it’s not too tricky to put those things together and beat the puzzle. Each new room you enter adds a new element- the portals, the portal gun, the sad turrets, the toxic slime. You learn about each element in a structured way and then have to apply in more complicated puzzles. A simple technique you learn for passing from portal to portal gets more complex when you have to chain portals or open new ones while soaring through the air.

Assessment means to test how well students have learned a concept. In Portal, game developers paired assessment with a concept they called “gating”; the doors on the rooms of the puzzles were gates that players could not pass beyond if they had not mastered the concepts of the last puzzle. For me, these two examples from Portal explain the concepts of scaffolding and assessment far more clearly than a technical definition in a teaching textbook. Because I have played Portal, I know how the scaffolding and gating feel.

So how could we apply scaffolding and gating to teaching?

In an information literacy instruction session it can be tempting to try and teach multiple skills at once. For example, we might try and teach advanced research skills using Boolean logic at the same time as we teach the basic interface of the discovery layer. This is probably not a well-scaffolded lesson; it’s not something that Portal would do.

In Portal we would first learn the basics with lots of support and then learn how to apply them.

In an information literacy session we would first learn how to use the interface, then learn how to use it to do serious research.

The same idea works for assessment and gating. The gating concept essentially says that there should be a check after every new lesson is taught. The game assesses how well you know the important skills by not letting you move on until you’ve mastered them. In the previous example, the teacher-librarian could make everyone find a simple item in the discovery layer to prove that they knew how to use the interface before moving on to new skills. This would be Portal-like “gating” in action.

Portal is a popular game partly because it is very good at teaching people how to play it. If you were thrown into the final levels without all the build-up and scaffolding, the game would be confusing, frustrating, and probably only really popular among a niche group of masochists. But because the game slowly introduces each new concept and makes sure you understand it before moving on, you feel successful at each step and more enthusiastic about learning what’s next. As teachers, we should try to give the same experience to our students.

tl-dr

When planning lessons we should always ask “what would Portal do?”

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I’ve been reading Jesse Schell’s book The Art of Game Design, a book that is practically worshiped in influential gaming circles. As an information scientist, I’m trained to think about the user at all times, whether it’s a library patron checking out a book or a gamer in a boss fight. So, naturally, I was really interested in Schell’s chapters on designing games with their potential players in mind.

I must admit, I was on board with everything in his book until I reached chapter 8, “The game is made for a player.” As I began the chapter, I was expecting to read a review of the principles in user-centered design – such as involving users at all stages of the product’s development, performing usability testing, and so on… especially given the game industry’s tendency to involve players in widespread beta testing. Instead, Schell presented me with psychological theories such as Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, among others, as well as designing by generalized demographics. This generalization section is where I seriously objected.

If you’ve been reading this blog for long, you might remember from my previous posts such as “Boy gamers, girl gamers… or just plain gamers?” and “Girls and sex (and games): An unnatural order of things?” that I’ve never been your “average” girl – whatever average means. So when I read in Schell’s section on designing by demographics that “when making games for large audiences, generalizations are useful” (p. 103), I woke up and read on.

Age: in my age bracket of Schell’s (35-50; I’m at the lower end, so watch your comments) he focuses on the fact that people in this bracket are busy with raising a family and may not have as much time for games and “look for game playing opportunities the whole family can enjoy together.” I don’t have a family. I don’t have as much time for games as I’d like because I have a demanding career, but I don’t have to worry about what the little munchkins think of my passion for PvP.

/stops to save post draft obsessively due to thunderstorm passing through town

Gender: this is the section that made me want a drink. Apparently, men like mastery, competition, destruction, spatial puzzles, and trial and error in games… ok, sure. I’m not a man and I don’t want to generalize men based on the men I know/game with, but this isn’t every quality I observe in my male gamer friends.

Apparently, women like to see the following in games:

– Emotion. As support, he says that women like “emotional” romance novels, and men like “physical” porn. I have never read an “emotional” romance novel, unless I was making fun of one, which may have happened during less productive times in my high school and university days. I’ll never admit to it.

– Real world. Females apparently like to do things that mimic RL, like taking care of dolls. The dolls I owned as a girl stayed in the closet, while I ran the video games nonstop. He mentions Barbie games in this section. Not so much. Anytime I’ve ever discussed Barbie games with a female friend, she has a similar disgusted reaction; we go to the restroom and and throw up together (because, of course, ladies always use the bathroom in pairs).

– Nurturing. “Females enjoy nurturing. Girls enjoy taking care of baby dolls, toy pets, and children younger than themselves” (p. 104). I guess this is why I told my parents at a young age that I didn’t want any brothers or sisters, and I thankfully remained an only child? Oh, wait. Never mind.

– Dialog and virtual puzzles. OK, this is one point I agree with: my spatial skills are not nearly as good as my verbal skills. I get laughed at all the time in game for my inability to find things, but I can carry on 5 whisper conversations while reading guild and general chat without thinking twice. But the spatial/verbal thing is different because that’s based on biology; the other things might be due to socially created gender expectations.

– Learning by example. “They [females] have a strong appreciation for clear tutorials that lead you carefully, step by step, so that when it is time to attempt a task, the player knows what she is supposed to do” (p, 105). Oh, GOD, no. Just give me the game and let me screw around with it. I learn things so much better when I get in and screw them up. Of course, I’ve never had the problem that I’ve encountered with some people who think the computer is going to blow up if you do the wrong thing.

– Also, he states that girls don’t like blowing up things in game (he’s never seen me play on an evening after a tense committee meeting at work, obviously) and that women, as mothers, don’t care much about having fun as long as their family is having fun. I know several mothers who game, and they can blow things up for their personal enjoyment as much as any man; in fact, it’s an outlet for them so they have something to do outside of their kids’ needs. But I guess they are in the 1% too.

So, back to information science research: one of my favorite professors in information science school, Dr. Linda Schamber, used to tell us that if it wasn’t about people, we shouldn’t include it in our papers for her class. I took three classes from her, and even in her Information Organization class, she remained stoically user-centric. At a time when the games industry is fragmented in interesting ways, from the “non-gamers” who are playing CityVille and Angry Birds all day, to the hardcore types who are somewhat bored with the options, it is certainly the case that designers must understand their future players’ needs, and design accordingly. But, what is the best way to do this? It’s a difficult question because you can’t characterize gamers any one way – or, if you do, you have to look at many facets, as @Gameronomist and I uncovered in Gamer Classification Week on this blog.

We do lots of research in IS on things like “the information needs of X group.” Unfortunately, these groups are frequently operationalized by the university students that the researchers can easily collect; this is not authentic user needs research. Sure, students game, but so do many other “types” of people, including women who never played with dolls and men who like to socialize while they level. Game designers and information scientists need to work together in meaningful ways to actually base game design on real input from real potential players, and think about ways to make game features flexible based on a range of real human desires and preferences, not on the ideas that boys like this, girls like this, young people are this way, and so on. We can do it. We haven’t yet, but we can.

tl-dr

Game design should take into account a number of factors, including evidence-based user studies. Information scientists can help with this. Also, I’m in the 1%, but strangely enough, I’m not voting for Romney.

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I don’t think most advertisements for games are actually directed at gamers. Hardcore gamers already know about the game, and usually know if they want to play it or not.

So, then, are advertisements directed at non-gamers? The casual gamer? The friends of the gamer? Are they designed to excite the gamer so that they show the advertisement to friends to get them excited?

I was thinking of this because of a conversation my guildies were having about the recent GW2 cinematic.

Personally, I didn’t like it very much because I don’t think it actually showed what the game was about, and it gave me a “wtf?” kind of moment. I think many others had the same reaction, but those “many others” were the population of people who 1) had already bought the game, 2) were already playing, 3) had already tried it, or 4) already decided they weren’t going to try it.

Many of the comments I heard about it related directly to the game itself: “they didn’t show enough of the game!” “they need to talk about the lore more!” “What about gameplay?” (ok, so maybe a couple of those were my own…) Which is both true, but also interesting, if you take a step back. These are the people who know about these aspects of the game already. Are they hoping Arena Net emphasizes the thing they like most about the game? Maybe this is just a tease to make people look up more about the game, because there’s no way to emphasize all of those things at once. (It’s like advertising! Le Gasp!)

Sadly, the biggest comment most had after viewing the cinematic (n=too small), was that they thought the cinematic was for a different game, even though all the people knew it was for GW2.

So what audience was it for? What audience is most game advertising for? The non-gamers? The non-hardcore audiences?

I think the cinematic was designed for prime time TV to bring in the non-gamers, or to get people who have no idea what Guild Wars 2 is to try it out, or at least look it up.

Is this the same for most game advertisements? Or only for those that advertise on television?

The best comment about the cinematic:

Are­naNet made a big dis­ser­vice to their fans, to their hard-working cin­e­mat­ics team, and I’m not sure if this trailer is good enough to con­nect to the new audi­ence they prob­a­bly aimed it to, since it doesn’t say any­thing about the game itself, which is only shown for 30 sec­onds of the 2.25 minute-long movie.

tl-dr

Game advertisements aren’t always designed for the hardcore gamers out there, they’re designed to bring in the people who haven’t necessarily heard about the game yet.

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Massively had a nice write up about forum censorship and trolling, related to Firefall’s forums. There are a few good gems I want to pick out of it:

From the original Firefall forum thread:

If you intended to frustrate me, you have. From now on, we’re going to start moderating the negativity on these forums for the sake of healthier discussions.

Back to the Massively article:

 Our tipster used the word “censorship” in suggesting that Massively write about this particular situation, and he joined a huge list of folks who have implored us to expose the evil that game companies do by muzzling free speech on their forums.

The problem is that it’s not so much evil as it is common sense. When you join a forum, you’re agreeing to play by the company’s rules; there’s really no such thing as free speech in that environment. If the powers-that-be don’t like what a user has to say, they have every right to limit the ability to say it and/or moderate it however they see fit. It’s doubly true in the case of a beta product like Firefall because unless you’ve purchased a Founder’s Pack, you’re there on the company’s dime (and probably not doing much actual testing unless you’re more conscientious about it than most of the folks signing up for betas these days).

The second:

Gamers are continually surprised and outraged by game company censorship, but in my opinion, they shouldn’t be. What for-profit firm in its right mind doesn’t put its own financial interests ahead of nebulous notions of fairness and free speech? Controlling the message is as important, if not more important, than developing a good game in today’s high-pressure (and high-dollar) production environment, and censorship on some level should be expected.

While I agree that the company has the right to moderate their forums however they want, my nerd rage has reached supremely high levels after reading these quotes. The sad part is, that my nerd rage is both in defense of the developer, and in defense of the community. Which voice do I listen to?! Which decision is right?!

Censorship is bad…mmmkay?

Censorship is a topic that will get me fired up right away. Part of me wants to say “All censorship is a horrible thing!” but I would be lying to myself. 99% of censorship is bad.

Book burning is a horrible thing.

Free speech rules.

I want access to all the information I can.

Because of that, the Firefall guys are doing a bad thing in censoring their community! It’s oppression!

So child pornography shouldn’t be censored?

Whoops. That hit the brakes pretty quick. Here’s where that last 1% comes in. Some things need to be censored to protect society as a whole. Child pornography is a perfect example of it. Hate speech is another (in my mind).

So what does this have to do with a video game company policing their forums? Quite a bit, because it depends on what kinds of content they’re policing.

If you look at the original forum post, there are indications of what the censorship will be about.

… the amount of shortsightedness and selfish trolling and self-important pontification I see from armchair game analysts is stunning … We welcome your feedback, but not your Chicken Little “sky is falling” ranting from those whose imaginations are not capable of looking further than the nose in front of their face and who ignore everything we say and DO and have done in the game for YOU.

Some definite passion going into this post, which is both good and bad.

The good:

Getting rid of the “selfish trolling and self-important pontification”. Like a handsome, intelligent blog writer once said, “Racism, Harassment, Griefing, Bullying, Trolling…whatever you call it…just stop.”

The bad:

We “have done in the game for YOU”. While I get the company is there for the fans, because the fans support them, this is definitely a slippery slope when it comes to censorship. It can easily move forward to the level of “we eliminated that bug for YOU” to “we burned those books for YOU” to “we illegally sabotaged the other companies for YOU, so our game would be the only one you love”.

Some seriously scary stuff when you start censoring. The trick is to not let emotions get involved. When emotions get involved in censorship, then it becomes personal. It should be about information, freedom, and free speech, while protecting vulnerable minorities, not “making things how I think they should be!”

A political view of censorship (http://www.economist.com/node/21563299?fsrc=scn/gp/wl/pe/kalsept22)

A good example of handling trolling and harassment without it becoming censorship (or personal) comes up with the GW2 bans. tl;dr of the reddit thread: Arena Net banned thousands of people for inappropriate names and chat, and then would publicly post why they were banned if they were specifically asked in the reddit thread. Complete transparency and following of their policies. /win

How is GW2 different than Firefall in this case?

Arena Net is not making it personal. They are enforcing the TOS, and the behaviors that are supposed to be followed while playing the game. There is no emotion involved.

Basically:

Wil Wheaton says: Don’t be a dick. (http://dontbeadickday.com)

Whereas Firefall is making the censorship personal because of the amount of trolling that’s happening. It’s policy and censorship based on personal feeling. Perhaps that feeling is completely legitimate, but there needs to be hard policy grounded, not in emotion, but in logic, so that it can be followed and understood by the whole community.

tl-dr

Censorship is bad, even to protect a community. Don’t be a dick and take advantage of censorship, because protecting a community from trolling and harassment is not censorship.

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Felandis has been playing games since the 80′s, and started playing MMOs about 10 years ago. Since then, life has changed for Fel (getting married and starting a family), and gaming habits/perspectives have changed accordingly. Fel was a founding officer of a guild and eventual gaming community (www.vanguardgaming.com), focused on these changes… in other words, RL > gaming, and when we do game, we keep it fun. Fel focuses primarily on the PvP aspects of MMOs.

Just a random thought here that has been floating around my head for the past few days.

I’ve been keeping up on the backlash to the derogatory Muhammad film trailers that some nut job released. I read each article, and on multiple websites, they have a comment section. The vast majority of every single comment section are arguments/fights between pro-Islamics and anti-Islamics.

So I always scroll through the comments, which are 99% garbage, but again, on every website you will find Islamics in the Middle East posting responses about their view points on Americans.

Here is what I’m getting at:

For all of human history, a country’s population has formulated opinions on the rest of the world based on what their government and media tells them (depending on the type of government/society). Very rarely did you have people who made direct contact with others across the world. When you look at the amount of people who travel the world, it is an extremely small percentage compared to the global population (point being, the vast majority of the world formulates their viewpoints based on what they hear/see in their own life, they don’t directly experience it when visiting another country).

With the internet being so readily available across the world now, that has changed. These comment sections probably do more harm to international relations than politics do.

Take this for example… A single guy in Iran is on one of these news websites, he reads the article, and starts reading the comments. He is enraged when he sees some dumb American spouting off stuff that is completely wrong. Hell, the American could just be an internet troll. Doesn’t matter. But the two of them go at it.

You all know how gaming and the internet can affect RL. Hell, if someone is trolling in a game, I’m usually thinking about it a lot IRL on how to get them to shut up, or to show them how they can’t troll.

Now imagine you really have no sense of “trolling“; that you’re an internet noob.  Imagine in that mindset, that you get into a heated debate with someone from another country, and that other person is a complete ignorant jerk to what your religion is about. How would you react? How would that SINGLE conversation, impact your view of that other country?

Unfortunately, I’m betting it impacts that viewpoint a LOT.

And it spreads from there. That guy tells his buddies about the argument, his buddies can’t believe someone can be so stupid and ignorant to say those things about their country and their religion. Now you have a whole social circle thinking the same thing.

Multiply that by the thousands of people who are falling into these same flame wars around the internet.

Suddenly, it doesn’t matter what each government says or does. The people of these different countries with different view points are fighting (verbally) directly with each other.

That may not seem like a big deal, but it is a very extreme shift in the way the world works. The internet can be a great machine to share information, but it can also do a hell of a lot of harm. It is like international policy is beginning to be shaped by the internet. And unfortunately, those trolls who try to start this stuff up? They could be influencing an entire group of people in another country, in a bad way.

tl-dr

The internet used for the right reasons, is incredible. The internet used for the wrong reasons, can do more harm than most can imagine. Don’t feed the trolls.

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I love Valve and Steam. Alot. I’m definitely not in the minority here either.

Why do we like Steam, and not the other platforms, like Origin? Because Steam gives us a “why”.

In my mind, when I think of Origin, I think they want to give me a product. They want to sell me their stuff. That’s their goal, that’s “what” they want to do. I have no idea “why” they want to do that (besides make money).

When I think of Steam, the first thing I think is “why” they made Steam. They made it so that I could get my games easier, faster, from anywhere, and to play along with my friends. Making money is a nice side effect of that, but that’s not their mission.

Case in point: Steam’s About Page. It’s a “Why?” for Steam. It tells me “why” to use Steam, not what it actually does for me. Origin doesn’t even have an about page, it just has sales.

Steam is also amazing compared to other online services, like Netflix, because it’s not a streaming service. You own the game you purchase. Which isn’t the case with Netflix at all. Steam even exists in the real world now (as a product).

tl-dr

Steam is teh awesome.

Side note: The “why” of this blog is to give information to gamers, and gamers to information. The “what” is the posts that actually do that, but those are incidental to the “why.”

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Social gaming is something I enjoy, and it’s one of the main reasons I game. I like the community aspect of gaming, whether it’s just social, or moves into the competitive realm (which is also social to me). The hard part with this is what The Mighty Viking Hamster (amazing name for a blog amirite?) was talking about:

So, am I the only one who thinks that MMOs should allow players, both current and old ones, to access some chat channels, including guild chat, through a separate IM program, even when they are not subscribed anymore?

Before I break this down, I want to say that I agree completely. Having social systems outside of games that we play is an amazing added benefit to gaming.

Sure, there are other ways that guilds/friends can keep in touch outside of a game, but that’s not really the point here. The point is that keeping touch outside of the game (currently) is dichotomous in nature. If you’re in the game, you’re communicating in game. If you’re out of the game, your’re communicating on forums on an instant messenger or Vent or Mumble or something. What if I want to keep in touch with my friends when they’re playing and I’m unsubscribed from the game? Or at a family get together?

The separation of “in game” and “out of game” communication is what needs to go away.

Because it encourages us to come back to games

Companies may be loathe to say “you can’t communicate in game with your friends when you don’t have the game!” (in a subscription based model), but I think this is incorrect. If I was chatting with guildies and they were doing really cool fun stuff, and I wasn’t playing, it would just want me to play more! A feature like this may not create new revenue, but it sure will bring back old players.

WoW already does this to a certain degree, allowing for mobile armory and chatting in guild chat from a phone, but these are separate services in addition to the game itself. I’ve seen very few people actually using it, but it’s pretty cool when they do. Making it free would only encourage a higher participation rate. It’d be like txting from your phone, but it’d be guild chat instead. Want.

Because it encourages us to stay in the game

A communication system that spans on and offline would also encourage retention of players. Supporting ease of communication between guild members just facilitates keeping a group of people together, which means people play the game longer. This is great for subscription-based business models, but it’s great for any game. Moar players = better.

Imagine a chat room connected to the guild forums, but that chat room is guild chat. Then you can chat in guild on your phone, on a computer that can’t run the game, wherever! Imagine those moments that get quiet when everyone is at work or gone, or just can’t log on… now you can all still talk! Sure, you might be the only person logged into the game, but now you have more people to talk to! I think this would just increase the social abilities of guilds.

Other, similar, programs already exist

Steam does this really well; I just think it’s missing something. Primarily, the ability to do group chat, or a “guild chat” type feature (or maybe I just don’t know about it). 1 to 1 chat/IM on Steam is amazing, but if you added in a group chat feature, it would catapult it from amazing to mind boggling. Steam would turn into a social network (more than it already is).

There are also other programs, such as Raptr, but I know very little about them as I have not really used them. There doesn’t seem to be a huge pick up rate to them (though I see Raptr growing among my friends).

So just build it already!

I’m just kidding. Building something like this would be a monumental programming effort. I’m just spinning some gears over here about the theory of why this could be cool and a good way to implement it. I know it would take a ton of effort. I just hope someone does!

tl-dr

There needs to be a way to communicate with gaming friends both in game, and out of game at the same time. Do not separate the communication into two different spaces.

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